this guy is killer!!! he is 20 and plays drums for the smashing pumpkins. I never knew about him until I watched the smashing pumpkins in concert on the Paladia channel tonight. I saw him destroying, and had to look him up. Def check him out, hes insane.

I also caught that concert on Palladia and the kid killed it. I had read his feature article in MD a few months ago and remember thinking that he couldn't be any good but I was wrong. A very mature player for a 20 year old and some very impressive interpretations of classic Pumpkin's tunes.

That whole Smashing Pumpkins audition thing was so strange. Corgan invited several older vets to personal auditions, then floated a bunch of younger names through websites and forums. I got a call from a friend about a week after the Chamberlain press release drama that my name was on the Smashing Pumpkins website as a possible replacement. Then the same rumor showed up on /of all places/ the Mike Portnoy forum. Somebody had obviously planted it to get an offbeat reaction and to this day I don't know why. What I didn't understand was how anybody with those guys would have known about me since I had experienced no contact with that world of music at all.

Then there was this subsequent phone call from someone claiming to represent Corgan in LA, saying there was going to be another invitation audition. So I thought I was on for that and was already working with people out there on getting that together. Then I went back to Georgia and heard nothing for a month, followed by yet another press release that there was going to be a public Smashing Pumpkins drummer contest. After that I thought the whole thing was a load of user stuff, and rapidly lost interest.

Then I head a guy even younger than me had actually been named the drummer and I didn't believe it until I saw the MD article a few months ago. In fact I don't think anybody did, because by this time we all started to think the whole thing was a screwed up publicity stunt.

But even after all that, I'm glad to know that a good player took the slot, although they sure could have handled that a whole so called process a lot better. Many of us wasted a great amount of time during this peculiar string a long deal that really appeared devoid of all rhyme or reason. But again...congrats to Byrne who sounds really good on those youtubes.